This study mainly explores the effect of market states (price and returns) on the relationship between spot and futures oil prices and targets three important issues: long-run cointegration, causalities, and market efficiency. Based on previous studies exhibiting bi-directional causality between spot and futures oil prices, this study employs quantile regressions to examine the possible feedback effect in their long-run cointegration and their causalities. In particular, it allows for exploring the possible asymmetric responses between spot and futures markets. The empirical results herein find that the long-run cointegrated relationship between contemporaneous spot and futures prices is impacted by the states of the spot markets. Similarly, whether futures oil prices lead spot oil prices is relevant with the states of the futures markets. This study also examines the efficiency of crude oil markets and shows that the efficiency is related to the length of futures contracts. These findings offer some implicative suggestions and strategies.

There are gradually prosperous trades in foreign exchange markets, agents could hedge, speculate and arbitrage in markets. Market efficiency therefore is worthy of investigate in international finance. According to simple market efficiency hypothesis, the long-run relationship wound exist between spot exchange rate and forward exchange rate as foreign exchange markets are efficient. In the purpose of this study is to examine the long-run relationship between spot exchange rate and forward exchange rate by cointegration theory. We consider a new method¡Ðpanel cointegration that data sets contain not only time series also corss sections, to re-examine the relationship between spot and forward exchange rates. Conclusively, the results of cointegration relationships exist between spot and forward exchange rates in Taiwan, Singapore, Japanese, and Canada by applying panel cointegration model.

The informational content of implied volatility and its prediction power is evaluated for time horizons of one month. The study covers the period of November 2007 to November 2013 for the two indices S&P500 and OMXS30. The findings are put in relation to the corresponding results for past realized volatility. We find results supporting that implied volatility is an efficient, although biased estimator of realized volatility. Our results support the common notion that implied volatility predicts realized volatility better than past realized volatility, and that it also subsumes most of the informational content of past realized volatility.

Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation presents the results of three empirical studies on price formation and liquidity in financial futures markets. The research entails three related areas: the effect of taxes on the prices of Australian stock index futures; the efficiency of the information transmission mechanism between the cash and futures markets; and the price and liquidity impact of large trades in interest rate and equity index futures markets. An overview of previous research identifies some important gaps in the existing literature that this dissertation aims to resolve for the benefit of arbitrageurs, investment managers, brokers and regulators.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005.

[pt] A hipótese de eficiência de Mercado é um tema básico e serviu como base para formação de teorias em finanças, sendo, portanto, um dos problemas mais estudados. Relacionadas ao assunto, algumas pesquisas vêm se dedicando especificamente à investigação de fenômenos de underreaction/overreaction, ou seja, de reações excessivas do mercado e incompatíveis com a hipótese de eficiência. Neste contexto, o presente trabalho objetivou aplicar ao mercado acionário brasileiro teste de underreaction/overreaction baseados nas principais metodologias utilizadas em pesquisas internacionais. As principais evidências obtidas indicam a existência destes excessos de reações, contrariando a uma das principais teorias já estudadas. / [en] The hypothesis of market efficiency is a central theme in finance and one of the most studied subjects. Related to the subject, some research has been dedicated specifically to investigating the under reaction / overreaction phenomena, ie, the market over reactions that is incompatible with the hypothesis of efficiency. In this context, this study aimed to apply in the Brazilian stock market tests of under reaction / overreaction based on the main methodologies used in international surveys. The main evidence obtained indicates the existence of these excesses of reactions, contrary to one of the main theories already studied.

This paper examines the effects of dividend announcements and dividend payments on OMX30 stock prices and tests if these effects indicate market efficiency. An event study methodology is used to find if the dividend events have a significant impact on stock prices. The study finds that both dividend announcements and dividend payments have a significant negative effect on prices. Disappointed investors or lowered expectations for future dividends may be the cause of the announcement effect. The results indicate that the stock market is semi-strong efficient for the announcements but inefficient when it comes to the payments.

Since Engle and Granger formulated the concept of cointegration in 1987, the literature has extensively examined the unbiasedness of the commodity futures prices using the cointegration-based technique. Despite intense attention, many of the previous studies suffer from the contradicting empirical results. That is, the cointegration test and the stationarity test on the differential contradict each other. In marked contrast, my dissertation develops the no-arbitrage cost-of-carry model in the NYMEX light sweet crude oil futures market and tests stationarity of the spot-futures differential. It is demonstrated that the primary cause of the "cointegration paradox" is the model misspecifications resulting in omitted variable bias.

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My dissertation contains three essays on short-selling, margin trading, and market efficiency. The first essay uses a unique exogenous event, the introduction of short selling in the Chinese stock market, to examine the direct link between idiosyncratic risk and short selling. Based on Shleifer and Vishny (1997), I hypothesize that idiosyncratic risk deters arbitrageurs with negative information from taking short positions in overvalued stocks. Consequently, the stocks with high idiosyncratic risk are more overvalued at the onset of the introduction of short sale and perform worse in the subsequent period. The second essay examines the impact of the introduction of margin trading and short selling in the Chinese stock market on market quality. The third essay examines the relationship between short selling and SEO discount under the SEC’s amendment to Rule 105. If the amendment is binding, the short-selling prior to seasoned equity offering (SEO) should correctly reflect negative information and promote price efficiency. Thus the winner’s curse problem during SEO process is reduced and the value discount of a SEO should be less